As a music manager and head of a small record label, Darren Gallop found it tough keeping on top of the steady stream of information pouring in everyday.

“There was just a lot of administrative work around scheduling, sharing scheduling details, and sharing last-minute changes with people,” recalled Gallop, the 39-year-old CEO and co-founder ofSydney-based Marcato Digital Solutions Ltd.

“I felt fairly inundated with phone calls and emails asking for things,” he said in a recent interview.

The search for a way to deal with all that information led to the birth of Marcato Digital in 2008.

The company designs and sells web-based software that allows musicians and festival operators to manage event logistics, such as bookings, budgets, travel arrangements, social media and artist’s contracts.

“We weren’t looking to sell software, we were looking to solve the problem,” Gallop said.

“After looking around, we never really found anything. ... I think, had there been, that would be the end of (it).”

Instead, Marcato is now Gallop’s main focus.

Co-founded with Morgan Currie, the company employs 13, and is adding four more software developers to its team in the next couple of months as it looks for ways to add more flexibility to its products and broaden its market base.

Currie, who has a background in computer coding and web development, had been working at the record label with Gallop and heard his grumbling.

“He heard me sort of (complaining) about one issue we had around tracking hours of our employees and sort of figuring our payroll and stuff. ... In a couple of days (he) made a tool that allowed us to track that.”

“That sort of got me thinking,” said Gallop.

The two researched the features that the record label would need in a software program. They sent it to some software development firms to get quotes.

“The quotes that came back were really high, anywhere from a quarter of a million to a half-million dollars.”

The price was well out of reach, but after running the idea by people in the music and business worlds, Gallop and Currie began tossing around the concept as a business venture.

They entered Innovacorp’s I-3 Technology Start-up Competition in 2007 and walked away with a $100,000 prize.

Those funds enabled them to start a company and leverage some other investment.

Marcato has several investors, Gallop said.

“By some point in 2008, we had enough money to hire a small team, including software developers. We just started working on the platform. It was a slow start ... but by 2009, we started to get some development going,” he said.

By September 2011, the company was finally ready to take its product to market.

The software, available in English and French, sells around the world, with the bulk of customers in North America.

Most clients are “ music or other art-type events like film festivals, comedy festivals,” he said.

Halifax Pop Explosion, the East Coast Music Association, Nova Scotia Music Week and the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival are some clients.

Marcato is in the process of raising more investment as it expands.

“We are doing a million-dollar round and we have got a little more than half of that confirmed. We are still speaking with several people to close that up,” Gallop said.

“We are speaking with some angel investors and some different seed funds and this type of thing.”

A Cape Breton native, Gallop sees both advantages and disadvantages to having a business on the island.

When it comes to business travel, flying in and out of Sydney means added costs and downtime.

“I would say that could be offset by some of the factors here, like the costs of running a business here are a little less than in a major city.”

A definite challenge exists attracting talent, “particularly on the technical and development side,” but that is not unique to Cape Breton, Gallop said.

“That’s just as big, or even potentially more of a challenge in Halifax, where there are obviously more developers in the community ... but there are still are a whole lot more companies there, that are pulling from that pool.

“It’s a challenge we have, but it is also a challenge that we have in our country.”

Gallop believes Marcato would have gotten off the ground faster with the right talent at the start.

“We have an experienced team here now that we have spent many years acquiring. I think, however, had we been in a place that it was easier to acquire talent we probably would have moved along quicker.”

As it expands, the company is looking into recruiting experienced software developers in other parts of the world who will work remotely.

“They would live somewhere else and they would work with us,” he said.